Few detections of Black-backed Woodpeckers (Picoides arcticus) in extreme wildfires in the Sierra Nevada

Angela M White,Rodney B Siegel,Robert L Wilkerson,Gina L Tarbill

doi:10.5751/ace-01375-140117

Abstract

White, A. M., G. L. Tarbill, B. Wilkerson, and R. Siegel. 2019. Few detections of Black-backed Woodpeckers (Picoides arcticus) in extreme wildfires in the Sierra Nevada. Avian Conservation and Ecology 14(1):17. https://doi.org/10.5751/ACE-01375-140117

Highlights

Dry coniferous forests of the western United States are experiencing increasing wildfire activity and severity due to both an accumulation of forest fuels and changing climatic conditions (Westerling et al 2006, Dennison et al 2014, Safford and Stevens 2017, Stevens et al 2017)
The Blackbacked Woodpecker inhabits boreal and montane forests of North America where it is strongly associated with forest disturbances that result in large-scale tree mortality, such as highseverity fire (Saab and Powell 2005, Hutto 2008, Nappi and Drapeau 2009, Saracco et al 2011) and, to a lesser degree, bark beetle outbreaks (Rota et al 2014a, b), it is found in undisturbed forests (Tremblay et al 2016)
In 2015, we reduced the number of broadcast surveys in the Rim fire, we detected Black-backed Woodpeckers at 22 surveys (10% of survey points), again predominately in habitat consistent with nest locations (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Dry coniferous forests of the western United States are experiencing increasing wildfire activity and severity due to both an accumulation of forest fuels and changing climatic conditions (Westerling et al 2006, Dennison et al 2014, Safford and Stevens 2017, Stevens et al 2017). In the boreal forests of Canada, which tend to experience large, infrequent stand-replacing events (Payette 1992), most trees are killed in a single pulse, resulting in largely synchronized tree mortality and subsequent decay rates. In such fires, Black-backed Woodpecker populations are irruptive and individuals tend to occupy these fires for short periods of time (as little as two years) before dispersing to new habitat patches (Nappi and Drapeau 2009). When forest fires burn at lower intensity, this results in smaller patches of fire-killed trees within the fire matrix (Safford and Stevens 2017, Stevens et al 2017, Steel et al 2018) that die nonsynchronously, allowing populations of Black-backed Woodpeckers to be more sedentary and subsist in individual fires for up to 10 years, though frequently less (Saracco et al 2011)

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Conclusion